Mud and Horn, Sword and Sparrow (Runehammer Books Book 1) Page 10

  Above this company waved and whipped two great thin banners with the meter and post symbol of Ramthas.

  Beneath these still marched the rest of the company: a steel-plated column of Dwarves in lockstep unison. “Hoouh!” they grunted with every fourth step. Their massive boots thumped, and when they turned they banged on their shields like savages. One of their bearded company yelled maneuvers, and like a great silver-scaled dragon they flowed. Each bore a kite shield, plumed helm, and an 8 foot pike. It was a sight to behold. “Hoouh!”

  North went they, and made camp on the road’s hard bed. The mountains dwindled, the cold bit, and the wind was thick with salt and fear. The north sea was a dire, thundering thing, and it could be heard in the distance smashing against the limestone crags and icy grottos. The clouds were low and boiling with shadow. Then one morning, as that gloom that cloaks the dawn begins to lift, the company laid eyes on the Saltfrost.

  Dread is a strange force in the hearts of the mighty. It creeps up the spine, as with any man, but in them found a vow and an oath staring back. From dreams of frozen peril awoke the company that morning, and reality offered little comfort. Still, they banged shoulders and clanged shields.

  “Another day in paradise!” yelled the Dwarvish captain.

  “Hoouh!” came the thundering retort.

  “Castle Manac lay 70 leagues East,” Vald addressed his folk as an equal, and they took attention from their bacon and warm mead to hear. “Every step will be one closer to dooms unknown. I served the Falcon King for 2 generations, and serve him still. The demon lord can throw whatever he wishes at us! We will drive like a spear through his cowardly defenses and pierce his black heart!”

  A cheer arose, and the company was on their feet. Fires were stamped out, packs slung, and pikes taken up.

  “Captain,” Vald continued, “are your Dwarven warriors prepared?”

  The bearded captain, stout as a tree and worn as work gloves, laughed and yelled, “The Silver Storm asks if we are ready! Anvil Knights! Are you prepared?” A great din of metal banging replied, as every one of them crossed pike and gauntlet. It was a roar of sound, mixed with laughter and oaths.

  “Good,” Vald remained still. “Come, warriors of Ramthas! We make good on all we hold dear! To Castle Manac, and justice for all time!”

  24

  On lakes of black sat the watch of the Demon Lord. He rested his gaze over the salt, sullen and beaten. The chains of flesh appalled him, and he yearned for the black gulfs between the stars, where only the embrace of the watching Gods was felt, and sweet oblivion was as infinite as time. He pressed the wall stone with his remaining hand, and stood, and surveyed his broken realm. It was desolate, and soundless, and dead. This gave some comfort.

  Within those rotted walls he pored and ruminated, and called on his dark masters for annihilation. The children of the meteor were his kin, not these soft fleshlings and their mewling dramas. There was not enough life force in him to cast another great spell of death, and each day he withered. His hate formed swirling eddies of black smoke that rose and fell about the castle: sometimes in humanoids forms, or those of horses, other times as spirals or shadowy writing.

  What armies he had conjured or reanimated had dissipated. Many of them simply lay slumped against the salted black stone like suits of armor. Their fibrous dead fingers still clutching iron scimitars as time dissolved their cursed bones. A long, low wailing echoed over the frozen swamp… It was the scar he had blighted on the land. This at least would please his masters.

  So with one last call of spite and supplication Manac the World Killer wove one final gease: That forever would the black memories of the dead in Saltfrost haunt the dreams of the living. That ignorant and unable would all mankind be, made subject to a kingdom of nightmare. To watch their loved ones die and be reborn and die again, to see their flesh eaten away in crystalline acid, or to gasp in horror at the passage of centuries; these dreams would they know. The children of the meteor would be known only as fear itself, for men make less import of dreams than they should. This fear would rot, and turn, and boil.

  This spell Manac cast and awaited Vald and his company. A night of glorious death was approaching on armored feet. Winter settled on Castle Manac like a crust. The tide pools became sandpaper death traps, and the outer swamp was layered in blackish freeze that even a war horse could not tread.

  For these reasons, a winter siege on the fortress was never dared, and The Red Lord was counting on it. This was not a season of wit and sense, though, but of madness.

  Those brave for Akram marched not for days or even weeks, but remained mired in toil for months on end. In labyrinthine circles they wandered and cursed. The muck and ice defied them at every turn. To cross a mile was to walk 10, and the weeks blended into one morass of fatigue.

  “Not so different from the Primoridus,” Mud said one night, Horn leaning against him by the pale fire. Campfires burned yellowish and sickly here, and produced little heat. “I can see why the scum makes his home here in the salt.”

  “My armor is rotting off my back,” Horn returned, “Leather hates this place more than I do.” Mud harumphed and shifted his weight, tossing another soggy twig on the fire. Horn reset her comfort, but for a brief moment their eyes met. He reminded her of her forbidden love and her lost child. He reminded her of bright times, of warm green skin and sunlight on the wheat. He reminded her of everything she missed, and she realized at that second she loved him for it.

  Mud was no fool, but a King most humble. In her look he saw the truth of her love, and the depth. He was uncertain what to do, so he blinked, bolstered his courage, and blinked again. A smile crossed his lips, and she kissed him. In that kiss vanished frost and rot. In that kiss the old sun in Westburg shone again. Mud had never touched an elf, save to destroy. Now he knew their true beauty, and softness, and glow. He kissed her in return.

  “The king makes the fight worth fighting!” came a roar from the next fire over in camp. Krim the Hammer, Mud’s top captain, raised his Orcish fist and smiled wide. All his kin saw the kiss, and set aside their jests and jibes for a cheer rarely heard among their kind:

  “For love we march to death’s black door!” the soldiers echoed.

  “For Akram’s rest we cross Saltfrost moor!”

  “For love, our lonely King no more!” A wave of laughter crossed the camp. To hear laughter in that bleak place was warmer than any fire, and spirits lifted.

  But the next day they were beaten again by tar and flies. They sank and sucked and lost swords and boots in the pitch. There was still a very long way to go.

  25

  Alfheim was an old place. Four great ages had passed there, each with ascending splendor, and punctuated by feats and monuments in ever-aging sagas.

  The first age was a time of brutality; strength ruled and endurance guided. The first men to walk the world were not Elves or Dwarves, but a mixture of these… A progenitor of all three. From megalithic barrows and standing stone fields they came. Theirs was a world of fog, and cold, and mystery. Back then there were hardly ten thousand souls in Alfheim. It was a lonely, frightening place.

  From these stone-building tribes emerged Kings and heroes, and councils of wise women too. They gathered, made war, and found all manner of ingenuity the world now enjoys. Steelwork they learned, and gemcraft, and even the healing arts. All this they did when the mountains were still young and the world cloaked in snow.

  In the second age, the ice receded, and the jungles of Kath and Hanumir grew lush. The Gods of men became many, and new civilizations grew from savage reaches unknown to the first people. The high peaks were mined hollow, the jungles riddled with stick walls and treehomes. The tree dwellers became slender and fey. They were nimble and keen and lived a life of abundance. Their lifespan expanded and their knowledge of arcane arts increased as they conquered the jungle reaches. These were the first Elves to walk Alfheim. Meanwhile, in the high stones of what became Ramthas and the pinnacles of Du
ros, men became stout stonemasons. Their hands grew knotted with generations, and they grew their beards to fight off the cold that remained in the peaks they called home.

  While Elves and Dwarves developed their peoples in the far places of the world, Humankind underwent a great period of growth. Their cities were like mountains, and their temples like the tallest trees. Every manner of invention came into being, and their system of roads made them mighty. Trade was a new artform then, and the many cultures of Alfheim made a lively community. It was a very good era for all.

  The third epoch, though, saw it all fall. Power grew and space ran thin. The old megaliths toppled and the cities outgrew their boundaries. The weather turned hot, and when the Dwarves retreated further into the distant North, the trade network that had built a world collapsed. Iron and steel ran short, and rebellion festered. And in the disquiet of these events, the dark arts came into being. In their first dabblings with dark magic, mankind nearly annihilated the world. The ruins smoldered and all that had been was but memory. Alfheim was a hot, dry crypt.

  So in silence the third age ended, and gave rise to the present era. Rebuilding is slow, but steady, and cool breezes once again blow. The Orcs, an accidental race born of the third age and elven treachery, fell into slavery at the hands of their creators. Many of the ancient cities still sit in ruin, but hope builds. This is when the war of the wall broke the peace. Growing Elven and Dwarvish kingdoms clashed at the great Wall of Duros. Ancient pride in the survival they won drove both races to belligerent, stubborn hate. Only the great wide heart of King Akram of Ramthas broke the feud.

  Castle Manac was built in the second age, and back then was called Snowsword. It served as a northern trading port for the Dwarves of Black Rock Island and further south to the Grey Coast. When heat covered the world, though, in the third age, the tower was abandoned and the great melts made the surrounding plain into a wide saltwater marsh. Nothing could thrive in that mire, so the castle stood empty for centuries.

  When the dark magic experiments of the third age sought secret places, Snowsword was a natural choice. At that time it was called Saltmarsh, or Saltmarsh Fort. Lydea and her brother Red Fang used the dark fortress to create Orc warriors, cast black curses on their enemies, and make mighty the Elven nations with dark trades of blood and souls. But this could not stay secret forever.

  When Dwarves and Men learned of the dark workings there, they made siege on the tower to end its evil power. King Maram of the Dwarves and Queen Ida of the Grey Coast hurled a hundred thousand warriors at the fortress, and they were met in the swamps by a horde of Orcish abominations. The siege lasted three years, and the marsh was littered with broken bodies and war machines. Lydea and her brother escaped to later fight the War of the Wall, but the King and Queen lay among the dead. So Saltmarsh fell lonely and no one dared tread there. No one until Manac walked there, as a beggar in simple robes. He was a mendicant of the Elder Gods, a simple conjurer from Kath. Some say he found the pools and saw there the doom of the world, some say he made a dark pact with death itself. Either way, he became a black-skinned demon and steadily drew his plans in the abandoned walls. Each night he gazed out over the marsh, and screams of countless dead begged him to stop.

  Now Vald and Sparrow and Mud and Horn laid eyes on the fortress distant. The company of Orcs and army of Dwarves all froze and stared. It was a bent, black finger curling into the low gloom by afternoon light. Around its base stood concentric circular walls, all in ruin, and it was built of black basalt and great red timbers fourty feet long and three feet thick. One lonely, wretched banner waved lazily from its spire: a thin, tattered black ribbon that ended in a long tapered point.

  “So this is Manac’s great hall of darkness,” Mud spat, “what a dump.”

  “We’ll be in sight by now,” Sparrow added, flicking a blob of mud at the tower like a tiny catapult.

  “Captain,” Vald called. His dwarvish commander turned. “How far to a bowshot of the outer wall?”

  The dwarf talked with his scout, and barked back “If our pace holds, two days march.”

  “What is your plan Northman?” Mud asked. “I assume one is brewing.”

  “Negotiate, of course,” he answered.

  26

  The final two days were the worst… And deadliest. Three of the Orc warriors sank to their doom, and couldn’t be saved even with a hundred backs at the ropes. The mud seemed to lurch up and clog their throats; the bog was halfalive and filled with hate. One Dwarven pikeman met death when he slipped and fell on a ragged human femur protruding from the peat. The dagger-bone sprouted from his hauberk and he spat black blood like a goblin, and died in his own spit.

  By night, as the company huddled in terror at the ghostly sucking noises and howls, a full two dozen men vanished with no explanation. Only the scraping, gurgling sounds of dead hands could be heard in the inky black. The mud was cold, too. It was topped with a thin sheet of dark brown ice that grew in spiny needles. When broken, it oozed forth a brine so salty it could dull a sword or dissolve a leather belt in seconds. To drown in this earth-blood was a horrible doom, and many met it.

  On the third morning they rose from what could not be called sleep and looked up at Castle Manac’s shadowed walls. It was still empty and motionless; Manac’s trap not yet sprung.

  Vald stamped out a pitiful, sputtering campfire with his long-toed greave, then turned and addressed the forlorn ruin with helm in hand.

  “Manac the Hated!” his voice echoed across the ice with scathing clarity. Many a time had he done this, but never in a scene like this one. Horn and Mud stood at his side, and the entire company of Orc and Dwarf at his back. Sparrow was nowhere to be seen.

  “Come out and face justice, coward! The free peoples of Alfheim demand your head, so be done with your theatrics! You know you are beaten!” Silence. Not even a dramatic crow’s caw broke the dim. “I am Vald the Northman, Silver Storm and captain of Anvil Rock! By the heart of the good King Akram, come out!”

  To Vald’s surprise, Manac’s hideous visage appeared above the titanic front gate. He strode forward, the spindly crenelations barely hiding his hulking form. The front rank of Dwarves knocked their stout bows with mud-caked bolts. There was a pause. The world hung in mid-air for a moment. All they had been through flashed through Vald’s mind, he focused in on the Demon Lord, and felt a sudden rush. He had oft wondered what this sensation would be, and now it arrived uninvited. It was the feeling of one’s death drawing in.

  The Red Lord blinked his inhuman, high-set eyes and the black salt-muds vibrated with an invisible wave of force. Another figure rose up at the wall’s top, standing next to Manac. At first it seemed a distortion of distance, or the morning dim, but it was indeed: a second demon king. A third came, then scores more. Manacs appeared in black puddles and emerged from crumbling stones, they stood stock still and unblinking, each with a ragged stump for one arm, but were as real as the frozen muck or the ominous sky. There were at least three hundred of the hideous clones. Vald showed his teeth, “Come on, my little bird,” he muttered to himself.

  “One or a thousand, it will make no difference!” Vald yelled. The demon lord did not reply. A moment passed, Horn braced her toes in the frost. “I admit your arrival is a surprise, insects,” Manac called from scores of throats. It was an unearthly, maddening sound to hear those inhuman voices in perfect chorus. “My gratitude is yours, for now I get to watch you all die.” With that, the demon clones attacked in force.

  Their first maneuver was the most terrible. In a blurred ring of black sharkskin and flashing teeth they closed around Vald the Silver Storm. Fully 20 or more of them descended on him with perfect simultaneity. They all reached forward with thin, razor nails and screaming howls. The Northman was no easy prey. Fenrir he drew first, and with the first arcing cut three demons were cloven utterly in twain. Their black ichor spewed in a wide circle as they toppled in pieces. His right arm swept behind him, Vald let the momentum twist him in the salt
ed ice, and with his left hand he drew Red Fang from its crimson scabbard. This blade he thrust in the direction of his spin, and skewered a Manac-copy like an apple on an arrow.

  The creatures made contact with him at that instant, gouging and clawing. His armor was cracked, sword belt in the mud, and helm in three pieces. A huge gash ran red at his right thigh. A quick glance behind him revealed the battle was no less fierce nearby. The Orcs had circled Mud, who shouted and thrust walls of invisible force at the foe. They flew back, tumbled, or braced, but their assault was barely slowed. Two of the Orc guards were torn to pieces. Krim, in fury, went to avenge these and found himself tackled and impaled. The Orcs saw their captain killed and rallied for a push, locking elbows and forming a wall of spears. One mighty step forward and 10 more demons lay slain, but only 1 Orc survived the desperate charge.

  Backs to their Orc comrades fought the Dwarves of Anvil Rock. “Hoouh!” they yelled, and pressed into the enemy horde in deadly unison. The shield wall stood at front, and behind them pressed a rank of pikemen who jabbed and swept at the demons with terrible precision and rhythm.

  Horn leapt from attacker to attacker, stabbing and spinning and sweating. Every now and then she caught a glimpse of Mud, who bled from his brow and now clubbed at the things with a broken axe.

  Vald surged again, straight up he flew like a lion. In one hand he carried Fenrir, the Grey Wolf. In the other, Red Fang, the ghost sword. He clanged the two legendary weapons together and came down hard, smashing a demon advance into bloody mud and frost. From here he split the blades apart, straightening both arms out, and scissor-cut 6 more red-eyed horrors to their death. This was not enough, though. As the maneuver concluded, and he poised to spring again, a great black claw found its mark, and sprouted from his chest like a dark arrow. He coughed up a spray of blood, and beheaded the attacker instantly.